Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Scribd.com To Take On Amazon Scribd CEO Confrims Document Sharing Site Will Sell eBooks To Kindle Users

Scribd, a formerly harmlessย documentย sharing site, has dedicated
itself to taking onย Goliath. Scribd will challenge Amazon in the market
niche it created &#8211; Kindle eBooks. Scribd is now selling eBooks and
other content to Kindl
e users and even provides a delivery to Kindles.
Scribd offers document sharing and group-editing of text files, and is
the proclaimed YouTube of print . They've started selling eBooks on
their website, which allow you to view these books on the web, or, beam
them to your Kindle. Amazon is the main bookseller for it's own Kindle
device, with Feedbooks and The Gutenberg Project providing free
open-source books to Kindle users. No other company has attempted to
circumvent Amazon at its own game.
Scribd's boyish CEO, Trip Adler, ย spoke with tech blog
Gizmodo,ย revealingย that while Scribd's small, mostlyย obscureย eBook
selection doesn't compare to Amazon's monstrous Kindle Store, they were
positioning themselves to compete head-to-head with them.
Scribd recently signed a deal with publisher 'John Wiley and Sons',
which gives them access to the Frommer's travel guides and the For
Dummies help book selection. Scribd claims that their publishing deal
is better than Amazon. Amazon reportedly splits profits 50/50 with a
publisher, and they set the price. Scribd only takes 20%, and lets the
publisher set their own price.
With Scribd's profit model, they seem more attractive to publishers,
although some Kindle users might not like buying their books from
outside Amazon. It's good to see competition in the Kindle space, as
this could drive prices down.